Best Mac OS X Mail Tips, Tricks, How to Guides for Beginners

The inbuilt Mail app for Mac OS X is a compelling app, but you cannot understand that by seeing only the user interface. There is a lot of things you can do with this Mail app. Some of the tips and tricks are mentioned below.

Mac OS X Mail Tips, Tricks, How to Guides

There are tons of other things those can be done with the Mail app. However, these following tutorials are made for only newbies those are about to start the journey with the Mail app.

How to add a new account in OS X Mail app?

If you set up a Mac computer and open the Mail app, there is high chance that you will get the only iCloud account in this app. However, this is possible to add more other accounts in this Mail app. For example, you can add Microsoft Exchange account, Gmail account, Yahoo Mail account, or any separate email account that is running with IMAP and POP3. For that, follow these steps.

Open up the Mail app.

Click Mail > Add Account.

Select the email service provider. If you want to add IMAP account, you can select Other Mail Account. After that, click the Continue

Now you have to enter the login credentials of your email account.

After that, you need to select the apps you want to use with that newly added account.

After clicking the Done button, you can find all your new messages in this app.

How to use Windows Live Mail in OS X Mail app?

If you are using a @outlook.com or @hotmail.com email ID or any other Windows Live email id, you can use that in Mac Mail app. This is exactly same as the above guide. However, in this case, you need to select Other Mail Account while choosing the account service provider.

How to block sender in Mail app for OS X?

Sometimes we do not want to get an email from a particular sender due to any reason. For example, someone if sending a lot of promotional email, or random advertisements to your email inbox. You can block that person from sending an email to you. If you do that, you will not get any email from that particular sender, and all the emails from that sender would be saved in the spam box.

Open up Mail app.

Click Mail > Preferences.

Switch to Rules

Click the Add Rule button

Name your rule, select From in the first drop-down menu, select Contains in the second drop-down menu, enter the email address of that sender in the corresponding empty box.

If you want to block multiple senders, click the plus sign, and add more senders by following the same steps.

You can also select what you want to do with those blocked messages.

At last, click the OK

How to send BCC thorough Mac Mail app?

If you try to write an email, you might find that Mail app doesn’t allow you to write the BCC email address. BCC or Blind Carbon Copy gets sent to the recipient only. Although it will enable you to write the CC email address, you cannot write the BCC email id, by default. To get it, here is a trick.

Open up the Mail app.

Click the View > Bcc Address Field.

After that, compose a mail, and you should get the Bcc field.

Alternatively, you can press Command + Option + B button together to show or hide this Bcc field.

How to set default account in OS X Mail?

If you add more than one accounts in the Mail app, you may not know which account would be used to send an email. Apple sends mail based on the email preference. By default, no account is selected as the default account. That means, Apple Mail can use any added account to send an email. If you do not like this setting and want to change it as per your requirement, here is what you need to do.

Open Mail app and go to Mail > Preference.

Switch to Composing

Now an email ID from the drop-down menu of Send new messages from You should find all your email address those are included in this app. You need to select one among them.

How to find the source of an email?

Nowadays every one out of ten people gets scammed by online fraud. Most of the people get junk email from the unspecified sender. Therefore, you can check the source of an email so that you can understand the sender behavior. Gmail and other email providers have this option, and you can get the same on this mail app as well.

Open an email in the Mail app.

Press Command + Option + U button together.

You will get a window where you can find all the details regarding an email. From IP to time or everything, you will get in this window.

How to change the font of mail app?

By default, the Mail app of OS X uses Helvetica font in send and received email. You can use that default font or change it to another font using this simple guide. Although this is not necessary, you can try this if you want to customize your email preference. This is also possible to change text color.

Open the Mail app and go to Mail > Preference.

Switch to Fonts & Colors

Click the Message font’s Select button and choose a font that you want.

The color selection can be done using the following options.

How to save any email as PDF?

Portable Document Format or PDF is one of the best file formats that us being used by people, who are concerned about security. In case you want to save an email as PDF file, you can do so without using any third-party app. For that, do follow the following steps.

Open an email in the Mail app. You can select any email as well.

Go to File > Export as PDF

Now you need to select a location where you want to save the file and name the file according to your wish.

That’s all! The file will be saved within moments.

How to add a link to email signature?

The email signature is one of the best and authentic positions that you can use to market your brand. From social media profile links to new website’s link, you can include anything in the email signature. However, this is quite hectic to add a link the email signature.

Open the Mail app and go to Mail > Preferences.

Switch to Signatures

Select the email id where you want to add or edit the signature.

Click the Plus sign to add a new signature.

Select the text that you want to show a link.

Right-click on the text > select Link > Add Link.

Now you can enter the link that you want to open when someone clicks the anchor text.

That’s all!

How to insert list and table in the new mail?

By default, the Mail app lets you insert either bulleted list or numbered list. For that, follow these steps:

Compose a new email in the Mail app.

Go to Format > Lists > Insert Bulleted List or Insert Numbered List.

Following that, you can insert the content of the list.

However, if you want to insert a table in the mail, here is what you need to do.

Open the TextEdit app on OS X.

Go to Format > Table.

Enter how many rows and columns you want, choose background color, etc.

Come back to the TextEdit window, enter all the details in each cell.

Press Command + A to select everything and Command + C to copy the selected texts.

Open the Mail app, create a new email, and press Command + V to paste that table in the mail.

That would be all.

How to set up autoresponder in OS X Mail app?

Let’s assume that you are going for a vacation for a couple of days and you want to let your senders know about that. Instead of checking your email frequently when you are on holiday, you can setup autoresponder so that a reply would be sent automatically. This is quite easy in OS X Mail app, and you need to follow these steps.

Open up the Mail app and go to Mail > Preferences.

Switch to Rules

Enter the name of your new rule, select All from the IF drop-down menu, select Every Message from the next drop-down menu and select Reply to Message from Perform the following actions drop-down menu.

Click the Reply message text and enter the text that you want to send when someone sends you a message.

That’s it! After clicking the OK button, your autoresponder will start automatically. You need to delete this rule to stop the autoresponder.

Where does Mail store all the data on your computer?

If you are more than just a regular Mac user, who wants to know where OS X Mail app keeps all the data, here is what you can do to find that out. S

Open desktop, press Options button and click on GO button in the navigation menu. You should the Library Therefore, go to Mail > V5.

Alternatively, you can press Command + Shift + G button together and enter this path: ~/Library/Mail/V5. It will open the same folder.

The V5 is the folder where OS X Mail stores everything. If you are using an older version, you should get a V2